The Armour Archive

I saw a design in the Osprey The Normans book which shows a Norman Ex-Byzantine mercenary with what looks like a scrolled backwards "S" enscribed on his gaiters. Now, I don't know what this symbol means yet, but it stated in the caption that similar decorative gaiters are a typical piece of cavalry equipment so I decided to go with it, as it fits my persona.
So, I fashioned the 8"x3" symbol out of 4-6 oz veg-tan leather and dyed it.
I now wish to attach it to my polished aluminum leg greaves (I state that the metal that the greaves were crafted from as I am not sure of a chemical reactions possiblity between option 2 and the metal -- plus it allows me to give another shout out to Sasuke from Oaks Armoury, thanks Chris!)

Here comes the issue; how do I attach it?

(1) Attaching it via rivets to the front of the greave. Period. That is all. Seems kinda dull and boring and I'm not sure it'll give a good, solid attachment to the greave.

(2) Attaching it with some type of adhesive.

(3) I thought of purchasing some solid brass kickplate, cutting out a larger version of the symbol, attaching the leather via small brass rivets to the larger brass version and then the brass/leather combo with two or three well-placed larger rivets.

Any other ideas? Should I go with one of the above? The reason I'm so critical is that I'd hate to ruin these greaves with badly placed drill holes that don't hold the leather decently, if that makes sense.

[img=http://img160.echo.cx/img160/6444/picture0021806tv.th.jpg]

Aww, geez, how can I resize this humungo thing?!

Bump

whoa what a biggy...
ok, replace that huge image with this nice little clickable image code (it will redirect you to the full size image):


or replace it with a nice clickable 800x600 56k'r friendly thumbnail version:


either way they'll look like this (yes, it's clickable):


Arrivederci!
-Justin

Contact cement.

It won't cost much to do it this way, and I think it will be some time before you need to do any 'repair' work to it.

And when you do, it will be pretty simple. You are more likely to have problems if you rivet it on, because the leather can attract moisture, which the glue will prevent problems with the leather, but if you put a rivet in it, that will let all sorts of galvanic action occur over time (years, in all likelyhood).

Plus, if you decide you don't like this, removing it will be easy.

Thanks, Justin. Thanks Al, I'll give it a try.